Meta talk:Dramatis Personae
Works Referenced The list is, at this point, pretty much complete, including all character names I could find from: *Jhereg (book) *Yendi (book) *Teckla (book) *Taltos (book) *Phoenix (book) *Athyra (book) *Orca (book) *Dragon (book) *Issola (book) *Dzur (book) *Jhegaala (book) *Iorich (book) *Tiassa (book) *Hawk (book) *Brokedown Palace *The Phoenix Guards *Five Hundred Years After *Paths of the Dead *The Lord of Castle Black *Sethra Lavode (book) Some Guidelines Used *As a general rule, animals are not included in the list, excepting those that are familiars of a witch, thus, Khaavren's horse Champer is not included, nor are Vilmos' norska, but Ambrus, Loiosh, Sireng and Awtla are. (Rocza may well be an exception to this exception, but she's close enough to a familiar for my purposes.) *I have not to included in the list as character names those persons who are only represented by a place name (example: Brachington is not a character in this list, despite the fact that we know he had a moor named after him). Persons who are mentioned explicitly as people as well as a place name are still included (example, Arylle). A notable exception to this rule is eating establishments; when a restaurant or vendor is referred to with a person's name, that person is assumed to be the proprietor of said establishment (aka Valabar & Sons, Len and Nieces, Honlo, &c) and there will be an entry for that individual. While there are certainly cases of restaurants having other kinds of names (e.g. The Blue Flame) I am unaware of any examples from the texts where such an establishment has a character's name who is someone other than the proprietor of said establishment, so this seems like a fairly safe assumption. *A few characters are listed by names that are known or assumed not to be their real ones (Noish-pa, Greyswan, Sticks, Funnel-head, Mockman, et al). If any of these receive real names later (unlikely in all but a few cases) their entries may need to be modified or moved. *Several persons (whose surnames are not known) have titles as their names, which might sometimes be confusing, since the titles may also apply to their ancestors or descendants as well. Fortunately this has rarely proven to be a problem. *Some few characters (Ori, Tem, Leen, Jani, Ibronka) have identical names, and so one or the other (or both) may have additional descriptions as a part of their name entry (i.e. Ori of Smallcliff or Ibronka (Dzur)) *If you note any other names that you feel should be included that I may have missed, please let me know (or just add them)... There have been a few persons who have been difficult to categorize and may have not been included for this reason. *Names from Dzur (book) are now accounted for. I ended up not bothering with spoiler warnings, but tried to keep the descriptions fairly unrevealing. --Majikjon 23:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC) *Names from Jhegaala (book) are now completed and include citations. I think SKZB might be playing with me a little here, since there's a number of relatively minor characters whose names appear to be deliberately withheld from the text (two stable boys, the son of Vaski the free farmer ("I sent K--I sent my boy..."), Saekeresh's butler, a few others) for no good reason I can see, other than maybe to make my job harder in compiling this list. Okay, maybe I'm just being paranoid. There's lots of that kind of thinking in this book, in any event. As always, if anyone sees any names or citations that are missing, please let me know. If anyone has any idea how to properly identify characters that Vlad never names and aren't pivotal to the story, please let me know that as well. --Majikjon 20:58, December 4, 2009 (UTC) *Work now completed through Iorich (finally). Tally now stands at 809 names. Phew. As always, please alert me to any misteaks (or just fix them). --Majikjon 02:12, May 12, 2010 (UTC) *Work currently underway for Hawk (book). I actually did add the names for Tiassa (book) as well back when that was first published, but not all the names from that one got descriptions, so I'll be fixing that as well in this go-round. --Majikjon (talk) 22:44, October 27, 2014 (UTC) :Update - Names and descriptions added from Hawk (book). Still working on getting descriptions for the names from Tiassa, but expect that to be finished soon. Descriptions now present for all entires. The unsefulness of these, as always, is somewhat inconsistent. --Majikjon (talk) 23:51, November 10, 2014 (UTC) Guide to Book Citations The numbers listed after a character's entry mark their first appearence in the Dragaera universe (note that this is going by publication order, NOT chronological story order). Given the difference in page number depending on whether a hardback, paperback, or omnibus edition of a book is being used, I have elected instead to make character citations go in Book, Chapter, Paragraph format. Typical chapters in the books contain between 130-280 paragraphs (generally depending on how much dialogue is in the chapter), so a rough estimate can usually be made as to the location of a given citation without having to actually count the paragraphs out. This makes it a bit harder to locate references, especially ones that occur later in a chapter, but they have the advantage of being consistent across all versions of the works. When two citations are listed, it means that the first citation is the place where the character is first mentioned and the second is the place where they first actually appear in the story. If only one citation is given (as is usually the case) it means that the character either does not actually appear, or else they appear as the first mention is made to them. * FM = Front Matter (includes all introductions, forewords and prefaces) * BM = Back Matter (includes all epilogues, afterwords and other ending sections) Note: This material is always treated as a whole, even in cases (e.g. Paths of the Dead) where there is more than one introductory or concluding section in the work. Note: Chapter numbers of the second and third volumes of the Viscount of Adrilankha are from 35-68 and 69-102 respectively, and are maintained in this format to avoid any numerical confusion. --Majikjon 21:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC) :Some thoughts: What's the proper thing to do when there's more than one front matter or back matter? Perhaps they ought to be numbered themselves, eg, FM1 would be the "A Few Words of Welcome from the Publisher" in The Paths of the Dead, and FM2 would be the preface by Paarfi in that same work? ::I suppose it would be appropriate to use lower-case roman numerals for the front matter sections... (I'm trying to avoid having the citations be too cryptic in and of themselves.) Still not sure how to handle separate back matter sections... But this only happens in the Khaavren Romances, so maybe not as big a deal. :And how about interchapter material? The only ones that come to mind as having those are Orca & Brokedown Palace, but they are there, and I think some characters might be mentioned in BP. Perhaps they could be referred to as the chapter number, with an "a" afterwards? Or perhaps a ".5"? (So an interlude between chapter 8 and 9 would be either "8a" or "8.5") :--Davdi 18:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC) ::This already came up (see the entry for Bajfold). I elected to use "I6" for "Interlude 6", but your idea might work, and be simpler to understand. I will ruminate on this. --Majikjon 20:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC) Update - For the last two books, I have been neglecting the paragraph-specific citations, and just referencing the chapters. Counting out the paragraphs has proven to just be way too much work for way too little benefit. Maybe someday I will go back and add these in for the sake of consistency, but for the time being I feel pointing out the chapter is close enough. --Majikjon (talk) 21:33, November 4, 2014 (UTC) Special Exceptions I have some special exceptions to the above rules, due to extremely unusual circumstances: * Daymar -- You will note has three citations listed after his name. This is because at first he is only mentioned, but then his first "appearence" in the story is in the form of psychic communication only, and not in person. Later, he shows up in person; this is the third citation. * Devera -- She appears in Jhereg, but is not named--but it doesn't seem right not to point out her actual first appearence, despite the fact that we don't learn her name until Yendi... So I've cited both appearences. Go figure that Devera would be a special case, eh? * Fentor e'Mondaar -- Since it is not entirely clear if the Fentor from Vlad's time (that he refers to as a Tsalmoth) is the same as the Fentor e'Mondaar referenced by Paarfi in the Viscount of Adrilankha, I have elected to cite his first appearence in VoA in addition to his first appearences in Jhereg. * Tukko -- First appears in Taltos, ch 3, but is not named. Later is given name "Chaz". Then, in Issola, his name changes to Tukko (which it has remained ever since). Hence, he gets 3 citations, one for his first appearance, and one for each of the times he is named. --Majikjon 19:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)